Proposed policies that are described imprecisely as “secular” have been all the rage within sovereignist ranks in recent years, from attempts at solving reasonable accommodation cases to the abandoned Charter of Values. Advancing secularism should not precipitate the ostracization of religious citizens. The Parti Québécois has crossed that line in the not-so-distant past, making its leaders, prone to displaying zealous devotion to intangibles, not exactly secularism’s ideal spokespeople.

As PQ leadership candidates engage in playful debate leading up to October’s vote, a veteran candidate chose to reintroduce secularism into the Twittersphere, implying on the social network last week that a rival should not have wished Muslims well on Eid al-Fitr, a holiday marking the end of Ramadan.

“With all due respect for liberty of religion,” mused Rosemont MNA Jean-François Lisée on Twitter last week in response to criticism that well-wishes conveyed to Quebec Muslims by Lac-Saint-Jean MNA Alexandre Cloutier were unnecessary, “I have asked myself the same question. And what about a day for celebrating atheists?”

Lisée, an atheist, was encouraging politicians to think twice before publicly acknowledging myriad religious celebrations. It isn’t an invalid discussion to launch, but not at the expense of any one cultural group, let alone one that is so routinely marginalized.

When confronted with his own tweets wishing Quebecers a Happy Easter, Lisée tried his best to justify those wishes by pointing out that “statutory holidays apply to all.”

To further deconstruct the conversation: Cloutier’s wishes, expressed in one sentence on Twitter, can hardly be construed as an infringement on the purported religious neutrality of the Quebec government.

As Lisée suggested, however, the tweet is a form of pandering to religious minorities (albeit one that Lisée himself and almost every Canadian politician regularly engages in).

Lisée, a 1995 referendum strategist and former adviser to premiers Jacques Parizeau and Lucien Bouchard, it’s safe to say, is at least as fervent in his devotion to sovereignty as the average believer is in practising their religion.

And therein lies the problem with the secularism debate in Quebec: It has been driven by nationalists who have replaced a religious devotion to the Catholic Church in recent decades with one to the Quebec government, its sovereignty, language and institutions. And blind faith isn’t particularly constructive when crafting public policy, regardless of the intangibles in question.

Though the majority of Quebecers are no longer devout, the notion that a firewall between church and state exists in Quebec is completely inaccurate, as religious institutions routinely benefit from favourable government policies. The separation was never formalized. The crucifix remains above the heads of lawmakers in the National Assembly (a late addition by premier Maurice Duplessis to placate the church) and it was recently announced that an outrageous $80-million will be spent to re-renovate St. Joseph’s Oratory after over a decade of restorations. What secularism?

Few Péquiste leaders would express their opposition to costly church renovations or other such subsidies because their Franco-lapsed-Catholicism dictates they must, even tangentially, remain connected to the church and recognize its imprint on Quebec society.

The failed Charter of Values, for example, was a highly ethnocentric document in that it would have disproportionally targeted religious non-Christians whose customs require the wearing of what the PQ described as “ostentatious” accessories, like hijabs or turbans. Without realizing it, many self-described atheist péquistes have been promoting policies that reinforce Catholic hegemony.

Lisée’s musing on Eid greetings was finicky and unnecessarily highlighted Muslims but the debate on true, practical secularism is worth having; may the same scrutiny be applied to evaluate government resources devoted to other faith-based movements, most notably the church and the publicly funded sovereignty movement.

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